All speech is political. Or, what any expression asks of us.
Why discourse and not all expression? Yes, why not, for an in-your-face expression in any form functions the same way. It is as if what one attends to, even if just to notice and move on, shouts: "Look at me, hear me, smell me, taste me, touch me, feel me . . . understand me, don't dismiss me, remember me, act as if you cared. . . ."
Thesis: Once one attends to that which has been expressed and before s/he fully re-cognizes the content or message, the invitation to discourse interaction completes the validity of the claim that all speech, that is expression, is political, having to do with power over an other.
Expression, in the broadest sense, imposes its presence to an attending percipient and at the same time attempts to colonize present awareness with itself and its import, if not more. Making this demand evidences inherent authority and power, even if the effect is the import's dismissal, or is it export's?
Now take the above paragraphs. In asserting what they do, they ask you to consider if not buy the explication. In form (words strung together) and content (meaning), we have a kind of co-incidence. As the meaning of the expression says all speech is political, the utterance by the nature of utterances (expression) at the same time says the same thing, or more accurately, enacts it.
Funny that that seems/is so, is it not? Reading, listening, viewing, etc., self proclaim--Pay Attention (at least).
One could say more about "all speech is political", for example what famous person first uttered this idea, what philosophical development it has had over the centuries, who were its historical or civic champions for belief in its truth or validity, why it should only obtain when matters of politics and government are concerned, and so forth; however, mere existence, ready-at-hand to be attended to, suffices to prove the simple self-evidency of what speech/expression is at the most fundamental, phenomenological level, of or having to do with the exertion of power and persuasion to achieve some effect on the percipient, or audience.
Now all this is a rabbit hole, or performative jumble. If what I assert in form is at the same time an example of what I assert in meaning (content), and such an explanation or description may be universally applied, then this perhaps is some kind of hermeneutic spiral to infinity, or hall of mirrors with no end to seeing the same image reflected again and again up to and, by extension, beyond the horizon, or fruitless Sisyphusian conundrum. In sum, my thesis is a trivial pursuit most feel unnecessary to say or realize.
On the other hand, having gone to this depth of the reflexivity of expression, I would call this insight(?), an inescapable tautological twist, and as valid and "true" as any other defense of the opening assertion that better and brighter stars have argued.
So be it for now till a lighter, clearer day dawns, if I may speak with authority and do gently impose upon thee.
_____
* Brown, Richard Harvey, _Society as Text: Essays on Rhetoric, Reason, and Reality_, University of Chicago Press, 1987
ADDENDUM (29.07.20)
If you are reading this sentence and trying to take in what it says, you are being manipulated to do something the words intend for you to do.
Words, or any expression put out and available for readers and others to receive or perceive, have a minimum of two reasons for existence.
+ One, to convey something--an idea, feeling, information, etc.
+ Two (as you are fulfilling the first reason for the words being there before you) the words themselves demand: "Look at me, hear me, smell me, taste me, touch me, feel me . . . understand me, don't dismiss me, remember me, act as if you cared. . . ."
Words (or other expressions (e.g., art installation) calling your attention) are a way "power is achieved and used", power being the core idea in the notion of politics or political.
